This invention concerns dispensers, and more particularly dispensers adapted to be detachably mounted to a motor vehicle and to distribute granular material on a traversed road surface.
Dispensers or spreaders have long been used in combination with road vehicles such as trucks equipped with snow plows which dispensers have been adapted to cause road salt or sand to be dispersed on the road surface.
The usual arrangement has included a dispersion rotor which is rotated as a flow of granular material is directed onto the rotor, with the supply of granular material from a truck mounted bin or a hopper mounted to the motor vehicle bumper.
The conventional arrangement has been to mount the dispenser to the rear and one side of the road vehicle. Such location, however, has the disadvantage of allowing considerable spray to contact the dispenser, which in turn causes rapid corrosion and jamming of the components. The rear mounting also creates a high degree of vulnerability to collision damage as the vehicle is backed up. The material, being thrown outward by the rotor, also has a tendency to become lodged in the vehicle underparts causing corrosion damage to the vehicle itself.
In addition, the usual arrangement involves a more or less permanent mounting of the dispenser arrangement to the vehicle, necessitating a time consuming disassembly of the dispenser arrangement to remove the dispenser from the vehicle.
The prior art dispensers created relatively uneven dispersion patterns and do not enable differing spread densities of the material.
These factors contribute to a relative lack of efficiency in the use of the spread material inasmuch as uniformity of spread is seldom achieved.
With increasing amounts of snow fall, road salting is of increasing importance to eliminate a portion of the snow fall, in order to prevent the accumulation of snow beyond the capacity of the available space to plow the snow into. That is, it may become necessary to melt off light snow falls in a given snow season in order to prevent excessive accumulation.
The use of road salt or sand in commercial and residential driveways and parking lots is also highly desirable.
For such applications, it would be advantageous to provide a dispenser suitable for ready attachment and detachment to light trucks and four-wheel drive vehicles which are equipped with snow plow blades for the purpose of private or commercial snow clearing operations.
In such commercial and private use of the dispenser arrangement, it would, of course, be highly desirable that the cost of such dispensers be at a minimum and the controls over the dispensing be simple, reliable, and trouble-free.
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a dispenser arrangement for the spreading of granular material on the road surface by road vehicles.
It is another object of the present invention to provide such dispenser arrangement which is readily attached and detached from motor vehicles.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide such a dispenser arrangement which is itself protected from the corrosive effects of road spray, while protecting the vehicle underbody from the road salt.
It is yet another object of the present invention to provide such a dispenser arrangement which produces a more uniform spreading of the granular material on the road surface.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide such a dispenser arrangement which enables a ready control over the density of the spreading of the granular material on the road surface.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide such a dispenser arrangement in which a very simple and reliable control over the dispensing of the granular material is enabled.